The world is swiftly changing by the second, getting smaller, nearer and more approachable; thanks to technology and the people who are developing it, we citizens are granted with access to whatever we feel like craving, whether it’s a picture, an article, art, the way people live at the other end of the world, or even information about ourselves.

Speaking of which, we always have new things happening to us which leads either to new needs or duties; so keeping our vital information integrated will help us and our country communicate better - and by communication we mean keeping track of the services that a country can provide its citizens - came to be a really urgent matter.

But such information is so sensitive that it needs to be monitored and used in a secure and safe manner so only authorized personnel can handle it, otherwise, a breach can lead to data loss and eventually, wasting the country’s resources.

That’s why “e-Serve” acts as the Service-Oriented Architecture Governance provider, or the “SOA Governance” provider for an avant-garde project that aids Egypt’s futuristic “Egypt 2030” vision; with the help and guidance of Egypt’s decisive entities while collaborating with the industrial private sector and the local communities, “e-Serve” is leading a project to guide our country towards a future that will help Egyptians live easier, gain more efficient services and live a significantly secure life.

SOA governance is a concept used for activities related to exercising control over the services within a system to enable it to register processes and risks, monitor and audit its capabilities, allowing the provider to continuously improve it while assuring the system’s quality and applying a centralized security system infrastructure.

The visionary project aims to connect all the fundamental organizations and entities so they can process, send and receive data needed for governmental entities day-to-day needs through a safe digital governmental switch.

Technically, the switch is an “ESB” or an Enterprise service Bus; put in simple words, it acts as a universal translator. The “ESB” is designed to ensure that the “Digital Government Service Provider” (Connected Entity) can relate to the requests received from the “Digital Government Service Consumer” and vice versa, which leads us to a whole new concept of communications, the “Government-to-Government” communication system.

The “G2G” concept is based on designing an interlaced platform amongst the governmental entities to observe each single change that happens within the system, which in turn leads to a new result or consequence.
Let’s take a very simple scenario of a newly born baby as an example: as soon as his/her digital birth certificate is issued from the “Ministry of Health”, the system subsequently sends multiple copies of his/her information to all the relevant stakeholders; the baby’s vaccinations schedule is monitored via the system to ensure he’ll be living a healthy childhood; the “Ministry of Education” will consider providing a seat for him/her in a school six years later; his/her school progress will be monitored to make sure he’ll be highly educated so he/she can become a productive person in his/her career, until he/she becomes a parent and have kids so the “Ministry of Social Solidarity” provides him and his family with the social security needed.

So basically, the system is built to link all the governmental entities together, facilitate their way of communication, deliver prompt services to authorized requesters and plays a pivotal role in maintaining the people’s and the countries data safe from being manipulated with via encrypting the channels between each and every service use.

For this kind of security, “e-Serve” added four security layers for such a huge project which are: Authentication, Authorization, Non-repudiation and Integrity, and Data protection

So whether you are a citizen, a government worker or executive, or even a service consumer who wants to get a service done via your day-to-day delivery interfaces, you’ll be sure that it’s provided through an efficient and a highly secure gateway that keeps you and your data connected at all times.